Personalization of computing environments has become increasingly popular. In addition to the vast array of software packages with similar functionalities for users to select, users may personalize settings within those software packages. For example, users of Microsoft® Windows® operating system may personalize their wallpaper and audio sounds, among other features of the operating system. While adjusting such features increases the personal experience for the user, allowing a user to recreate their own handwriting within a computing environment may be one of the means that most distinguish and personalize one user from another. Moreover, unlike some private settings, a user may be interested in sharing his/her handwriting if his/her emails or other documents could be written in personalized handwriting.
Generally, two kinds of approaches to generate or mimic handwriting have been attempted: direct handwriting capturing, and personal font design. Direct capturing collects the handwriting in digital form and reconstructs the handwriting on the receiver's computer using the recorded stroke point positions, pressure and brush style, or may simply send the images of the handwriting to the receiver. This approach is often utilized in Tablet PCs. Unfortunately, the user is required to write directly on the screen using a digital pen and tasks requiring large amounts of writing, such as preparing lengthy emails, may be inconvenient and tedious.
Personal font design makes a set of handwritten characters into a system font, for example, a true-type font. However, the personal font does not produce variation in character shapes that handwriting is supposed to have. Moreover, natural cursive handwriting cannot be generated, because the characters in system font are just rendered side by side.
Therefore, there exists a need in the art to allow a computer user to readily and effectively train a computer to recognize his/her handwriting without requiring time-intensive writing exercises, such as those associated with direct capturing. A further need exists for systems and methods to capture more characteristics from a sample than the shape of the individual characters, such as with personal font design systems. These and other needs are met with one or more aspects of the invention.